Frenchvita

The Pluperfect tense

This is the tense used to describe what has happened before another action in the past has already taken place.

• J’avais fini de chanter quand il est arrivé.
• I had finished singing when he arrived.

Formation

It is created by using the imperfect tense of the adequate auxiliary verbs, either to be or to have with the past participle:

Remember that the past participle with the auxilary verb 'être' needs to agree with the subject. So for example as you can see above the past participle in “vous étiez allé(e)(s)” can present four different subjects:

• Vous étiez allé (formal you, one person and masculine)
• Vous étiez allée (formal you, one person and feminine)
• Vous étiez allés (more than one person, at least one masculine)
• Vous étiez allées (more than one person and all of them are feminine gender)

The use of the pluperfect

Mainly to mention an action anterior to another which has also taken place in the past:

• J’étais allée chez le dentiste quand ils sont arrivés
• I had gone to the dentist when they arrived.

To finish with some of these past tenses or notions of past we need to have a look at the: The Future Perfect